A fist-sized green turtle was being gently brushed by a handler at Japan’s Ogasawara Marine Centre on September 27, 2021.
With fewer than 10 million adult sea turtles remaining in the world, the animal is categorised as “endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Green turtles face a range of threats, including overharvesting of their eggs, hunting of adult turtles, being caught up in fishing gear as well as loss of nesting sites on beaches. The facility is on the Ogasawara Islands about 1,000km (620 miles) south of the capital Tokyo, and in an area registered as a Unesco World Heritage Site.
